Go Kartli: Daily Routines

So we've talked a little about what we've been up to during our PC training, but I thought I'd post a bit more detailed info. The 5 of us in our village attend language classes 6 days a week in the village school. For the first two weeks, that meant 6 days of Georgian language class for 4 hours a day. This past week, we started into our second language, and swapped Russian for Georgian two days. Since those of us in this village all had Russian experience before arriving, we've been recruited to head to minority regions in Georgia. Our permanent sites will be in either predominantly Armenian or predominantly Azeri regions (each group makes up about 5-6 percent of Georgia's population, unsurprising since Armenia and Azerbaijan, also both former Soviet republics, are neighbors of Georgia's). Within these minority communities, the language really varies; we could find that Russian is the best means of communication, or the language of the group (either Armenian or Azeri) could be better, or, least likely, Georgian might work best. Given this uncertainty, we're going going for the trifecta and will start learning our third language next week. Sam and I have just found out that this will be Armenian, which means we'll get yet another alphabet of squiggly lines.

So language training has eaten up a good chunk of our time every day. In the afternoons, we get together with the 18 other TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) volunteers-in-training to have technical sessions about how to teach English. We learn everything from what the Georgian school context is like to the types of reforms and programs the Ministry of Education is undertaking to the proper way to lesson plan. As part of these sessions we've also begun our practicum, first by observing some English classes held in our villages and, beginning this week, by teaching lessons with Georgian counterparts. It's been a real rush to get to start working already, and we've been able to gain a lot of good practical hands-on experience that will help us tremendously as we set up shop in our permanent sites. (This being almost the end of the school year, the teachers partnered up with us seem more than happy to let us take over the reins in their classes.)

The PC trainees all have lunches together with their "clusters," that group of 5 living in the same village. Our Georgian language teachers live in the villages with us and join us for these lunches (always rotating so that each person's host family hosts lunch on a different day of the week), which always involve way more food than should ever be set out for such a small group, but which is always so delicious that way more than needs be is consumed.

That sums up much of the day-to-day scheduling of things; we're pretty well booked solid, Monday through Friday from 9-6. We usually get free time from Saturday at 2 through Sunday, although different weekends have different activities and events planned for us, courtesy of the PC. For training, we aren't allowed to leave our villages after 7pm and if we leave the village anytime before 7, we must return before 7pm and must submit a paper permission form to our Georgian language teacher a day in advance. These seemed like pretty stringent and overzealous rules to us at first until we realized that we're pretty well hopeless with the language still and couldn't do too much more if we had more freedom. Moreover, we're all so beat after language classes, training, teaching and stuffing ourselves with carb- and cheese-laden food that we're pretty contented just to hang around our little village, talking with our host families and watching Mexican soap operas each evening.

And speaking of carbolicious food offerings, and by way of closing this post out, I learned how to make Georgian donuts today. Don't tell Dunkin Donuts that I'm cheating on them. I still love them, too, but these fresh-out-of-the-frying-pan creme-filled donuts were fantastically wonderful. I'll be sure to perfect my art form while I'm here and I'll treat anyone who wants to a donut or 12 when next I'm stateside.

Stuffed with creme and waiting for the frying...